In an article in the New York Times, Natalie Angier has challenged some of the basic principles that vegetarians like to cling to. Namely, that plants are a gift to humanity to be eaten, while animals don’t want to be eaten. She is hardly the first person to tell the world about this, but doing it in the New York Times certainly helps it reach more people than the average plant research paper.

The truth is that no living thing wants to die, which means they certainly don’t want to be eaten. One easy way you can prove that plants don’t want to be eaten is by how bad they taste. No, seriously, they are gross, but there’s more. Just because they are stuck in the ground, doesn’t mean they are waiting to be eaten. In fact, according to Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin, “…[plants] respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk [with chemical signals]…”

These plants are constantly battling insects with chemical reactions. Make no mistake, these plants want only to live and Angier has helped show people these truths. Of course, the average vegan will ignore articles like this, but no living thing, be it plant or animal, wants to be a meal. To eat, something must die.

For helping share this information with the world, Natalie Angier, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via New York Times)

From The Wizard of Oz to The Lord of the Rings, talking trees have been a part of fantasy for a long time. Well, perhaps these thoughts should finally be freed from the land of myth. I recently discovered an old article thanks to this article in The Huffington Post.

It is entitled “Do Trees Communicate for Mutual Defense?” by Larry Gedney and although it’s from way back in 1986, the article cites a lot of research I had never heard of before. According to the research, trees under attack are able to communicate to each other to warn them about the danger. Once warned, the other trees can then defend themselves, such as by producing a chemical to ward off attacking insects.

To me, this throws so many vegan arguments out the window. If vegans are worried about the pain they cause animals, then what of the pain they cause to plants? If trees can recognize danger, pain is hardly a stretch. And if this happens in trees, who is the say it doesn’t happen in all other plants? Perhaps the plants don’t communicate their pain through sound like the animal world does, but through chemical reactions that other plants can feel.

Plants may not have the cute little beady eyes that animals do, but they are just as, if not more innocent. There are numerous plants that move during the course of the day to be able to get the most sun. This is no different from a sheep in the pasture searching for the best patch of grass, except that sheep, at some point in their evolution had the mobile ability to escape being eaten.

Hell, some plants, like the venus fly trap and pitcher plant are carnivorous. Why, then, is it wrong for humans to be?

If vegans and vegetarians want to tell me that eating animals is wrong, then they have a lot of research to do and a lot to learn themselves.

(via The Huffington Post and Alaska Science Forum)